{"id":35897,"date":"2023-09-19T13:55:27","date_gmt":"2023-09-19T17:55:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=35897"},"modified":"2023-09-19T13:55:31","modified_gmt":"2023-09-19T17:55:31","slug":"kris-fitzgerald-former-lake-wales-city-commissioner-who-was-suspended-and-reinstated-is-now-aiming-for-the-u-s-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2023\/09\/19\/kris-fitzgerald-former-lake-wales-city-commissioner-who-was-suspended-and-reinstated-is-now-aiming-for-the-u-s-house\/","title":{"rendered":"Kris Fitzgerald former Lake Wales City commissioner who was suspended and reinstated is now aiming for the U.S. House"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Fitzgerald has filed to run next year as a Democrat in District 15, seeking to challenge the incumbent, Rep.&nbsp;Laurel Lee, R-Tampa. Now living in the Tampa area, Fitzgerald is the first Democrat to enter the race.<\/p>\n\n\n        \n        <div class=\"embedpress-gutenberg-wrapper source-provider-Youtube aligncenter ep-clear   ep-content-protection-disabled inline\" id=\"5b3ed0e9-ddd1-4ec9-82af-a3cb8126ca17\" data-embed-type=\"Youtube \">\n            <div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper \">\n                <div id=\"ep-gutenberg-content-a44b52e50ff99b1d7f867ccd674ec262\" class=\"ep-gutenberg-content\">\n                    <div >\n                        <div class=\"ep-embed-content-wraper preset-default insta-grid ep-google-photos-carousel\"\n                            style=\"max-width:600px;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\"                                                                                                                >\n\n                            <div class=\"ose-youtube ose-uid-f2e9cf73cfa18e4e0eaca7ca7df64bd4 ose-embedpress-responsive\" style=\"width:600px; height:340px; max-height:340px; max-width:100%; display:inline-block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" allowFullScreen=\"true\" title=\"Kris Fitzgerald - Stand Up\" width=\"600\" height=\"340\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0ZkMIV1j_PE?feature=oembed&#038;color=red&#038;rel=1&#038;controls=2&#038;start=true&#038;end=true&#038;fs=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;autoplay=0&#038;modestbranding=0&#038;cc_load_policy=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; encrypted-media;accelerometer;autoplay;clipboard-write;gyroscope;picture-in-picture clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen title=\"Kris Fitzgerald former Lake Wales City commissioner who was suspended and reinstated is now aiming for the U.S. House\"><\/iframe><\/div>                        <\/div>\n\n                                            <\/div>\n                <\/div>\n            <\/div>\n        <\/div>\n    \n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Fitzgerald makes it clear that she will lean heavily on her experience of losing her Lake Wales position following an arrest as a major element of her campaign. In a section of her\u00a0campaign website\u00a0titled \u201cHer origin story,\u201d she claims that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd colluded to have her removed from her elected position, calling it \u201cthe biggest DeSantis scandal never told.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Fitzgerald, 43, filed her statement of candidacy with the Federal Elections Commission on Sept. 7. She had announced her plan to run in an interview with the Lake Wales News published in July.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">District 15 encompasses northwest Polk County, including most of Lakeland west of U.S. 98 and South Florida Avenue, as well as parts of Hillsborough and Pasco counties. Lee, Florida\u2019s former secretary of state, is in her first term.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 580px) 100vw, 580px\" src=\"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/image-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-35898\" style=\"width:357px;height:439px\" width=\"357\" height=\"439\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/image-1.jpg 580w, https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/image-1-244x300.jpg 244w\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A photo on her campaign website shows Fitzgerald with a bald head. The Lake Wales News reported in July that she opted to shave her head after a medical condition caused her to lose hair.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fitzgerald has filed to run next year as a Democrat in District 15, seeking to challenge the incumbent, Rep.&nbsp;Laurel Lee, R-Tampa. Now living in the Tampa area, Fitzgerald is the&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35898,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[6001],"class_list":["post-35897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-kris-fitzgerald-former-lake-wales-city-commissioner-who-was-suspended-and-reinstated-is-now-aiming-for-the-u-s-house"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}